What Matters Most: There’s No Place Like Home For The Holidays…Unless Mama Is Stressed!

What Matters Most:There’s No Place Like Home For The Holidays…
Unless Mama Is Stressed!

One of my favorite things to do during the holidays is to grab my favorite mug filled with Earl Grey tea and watch a Hallmark Movie with my hubby and older kids. I love to laugh and well up with tears as we watch everything in the movie fall into place. The homes are beautifully decorated, friends and family are gathered and someone ends up falling in love with some dreamy guy. You know, the classic chic flick.

They’re great to watch but then you’re snapped back to reality…which for most of us is a little less picturesque. To be honest, it leaves me with a feeling of wanting more out of my holidays. Wondering if I’m missing something, knowing I’m not setting that loving, happy tone in my home, making happy holiday memories for my family. I could just stop watching those chic flicks…but that doesn’t bring me closer to creating the “warmth of home” that I always thought would just somehow happen if I filled our home with family.

Recently I was listening to Christmas music and the words “Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays” filled my car and I began to wonder once my kids are grown…. if they will want to be home for the holidays.

The Hallmark movies and those wonderful feelings they give are really about living, loving and being present in the moment, letting the non-essentials wait….THAT is what I was missing. If you have teens or older children you know that the years go by so quickly.

Keep in mind, the tone in our homes is so often set by us, the Moms. I don’t like to face that fact because oftentimes the tone in our home is more stressful than peaceful…but then if I am to take an honest assessment of my own heart and mind…it would be one filled with stress and chaos. So, yeah, I’ve found it really is true…the tone in my home is often a reflection of me.

Inwardly I knew that I am often stressed. I either end up numbly coasting along or at times being drug through the seasons of my kids growing up years. I always say that I want to make sure that I am putting “What Matters Most” in place, not wanting to just rush through the days, but unless I make an effort in changing the stress level in my own life the stress in the home will remain.

A few ways to bring about change in our home began with me.

1. Get Enough Rest

What I've found that works best for me is making sure I get to bed early enough to be more rested and more able to enter in to the day, rather than be stressed, cranky and reacting to situations. A rested Mama is much more likely to be a kind and happy Mama.

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